Writing for the necessity of joy and the joy of necessity...

R a s m a   H a i d r i

Currents


When you hand me a handle-less teacup

with blue porcelain flowers,


I think of my mother,

saying science believed

in no such thing as a blue flower,


so if I found one, I’d be famous.

I looked for years, certain

I’d seen one, wondering

if science had heard of bluebells.


In the end, I thought blue

must be like apples--

who could say if apple in my mouth,

tasted apple to others?


You dip a wrought-iron spoon

into the cup--

Red currants…want some?


I expect sweet,

but get Wisconsin summer breeze

through my Norwegian grandma’s clapboard house,

white-petal-clouds in a robin-egg-sky,

a hedge higher than my head,


where fat currants sit red-jeweling

among leprechaun leaves,

my tongue pressing the berries—

juice zapping electric

red, the only flavor

tasting only of itself.


I was a girl then,

couldn’t see over the hedge,

or dreamI’d ever

taste such juice again.

Published in Young Ravens Literary Review, 2019